2. But the hope and expectation of successes to be achieved, and the feeling that our safety was not immediately threatened, rendered this second winter a happy contrast to the preceding one. We had now leisure and calmness for intellectual occupations, which were, indeed, the only means of relieving the monotony of the long period of darkness. We lived like hermits in our little cabins in the after-part of the ship, and learned that mental activity without any other joy suffices to make men happy and contented. The oppressive feeling of having to return ingloriously home, which had always been disagreeably present to our minds during the first winter, was no longer felt. We had now a hope, the charms of which grew day by day, that in the spring we should be able to leave the ship and start on expeditions to explore the land we had discovered. Happy in this expectation, we could enjoy the indescribable pleasures of good books, all the more that we were far from the busy haunts of men, and that the presence of danger clears and sharpens the understanding. Nowhere can a book be so valued as in such an isolated position as ours was. Great, therefore, was the advantage we possessed in a good library, consisting of books of science, and of the classics of literature. In fact, freed from the constantly recurring perils, which had been our portion in the first long Arctic night, this second winter was, to all who actively employed their minds, comparatively a state of happiness, undisturbed by cares. With regard to the crew, they were kept in good humour by the increase of their comforts. As we had not the prospect of a third winter in the ice—which would have rendered a greater economy of our provisions imperative—we were enabled to provide them with a more generous diet.
3. In the last three weeks of November we had complete darkness, the sky clouded over and the weather bad. So dark was it, that our environment, though it was overspread with countless hummocks and ice-cliffs, looked like one black unbroken level. On the 31st of October most of the stars were visible about 3 o’clock in the afternoon; by 4 o’clock actual night prevailed. On the 16th of November large print was barely legible even at noon. On the 18th of the month we were able to read the larger letters on the title-page of Vogt’s _Geology_ at the distance of a foot. At noon, on the 13th of December, not a letter of this same title-page was legible, even in clear weather. On the 5th of November there was a total eclipse of the moon, which then sank below the horizon and did not return till the 29th of that month. Its beams then fell on a large ice-hole, which had formed itself twenty miles to the south of the ship, which made us apprehensive lest our floe should be driven by the north winds in a southerly direction. On the 4th of December the moon reached its highest declination, but, as it waned, it was constantly obscured by bad weather. I had reckoned on the return of moonlight to make an excursion of some days to the mainland. But the fickleness of the weather at the beginning of December compelled me to confine my wanderings to Wilczek Island, which I frequently visited, although with a thermometer at -35° F. I was exposed to frost-bites in the face and hands, whenever I attempted to draw by the light of a lamp, and with only the protection of light woollen gloves.[22]